Long Lies the Shadow (14 page)

She hears the front door slam.

“Mom, what are you doing still in bed?” Kayleigh leans into the open door of the bedroom.

Viv peers over the edge of the duvet in confusion, looks at the clock. Past midday. It had been a late night.

“Mom, it’s afternoon already!” repeats her daughter. Then, with concern, “you’re not ill, are you?”

Viv sits up, a hand to her forehead. “No, I’m fine.”

“So this is what you do on the weekends we’re with Dad.” Kayleigh’s voice is half-serious, relieved.

“Actually, what
are
you doing here?” They were not due back till Monday.

Viv looks at her bedside table for her cigarettes. They lie next to the packet of condoms she and Nick had finally, mercifully, found. Oh, God, oh God, don’t let Kayleigh see, she pleads.

But Kayleigh has moved into the hall, calling back, “Oh, Dad’s taking us to his club. You know, the one with the tennis courts and the outdoor heated pool. So we just came to fetch our racquets and our cossies.” Her voice trails off and Viv can hear wardrobe doors slamming.

Nick had showered this morning, his goodbye kiss lingering, intimate. She had curled up again and slept. Without dreams. Until now. Viv stretches her legs and then jumps up, starts to pull the duvet from the bed. The action knocks both the condom packet and her cigarettes to the floor.

“Hello, Viv, you look good.” Jonnie’s voice behind her, smooth as silk.

She whips around, one hand trying to cover her nakedness, the other reaching for her robe. He stands in the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” She struggles into her robe, hoping her voice is stronger than it sounds. Damn him. He is not allowed in the house. She stands back, taking in his presence. Her body always betrays her at the sight of Jonnie, the heat that rises from the initial tug in the pit of her belly, followed by her effort to repress it. Then the anger, first at him, then at herself.

He is dressed casually, an open-necked shirt and jeans hugging his swimmer’s physique, the broad chest and shoulders tapering to narrow hips and muscular legs. A thin smile lingers on his mouth, a line of teeth showing white against his copper skin. His eyes sweep over her, that possessive look she had learned to detest.

“Thought I’d just pop in to say goodbye. I leave in a couple of weeks.” He strolls into the room, laconic. “You remember – London?”

Involuntarily, she retreats, clutches at the front of her gown. Not soon enough, she thinks. Jonnie turns towards her and as he does, his foot kicks against the packets on the floor. They both look down. Viv shrinks inside.

He looks up at her. “Having fun, I see,” but his tone does not match the lightness of the comment.

Viv backs away further until she is against the wall and immediately regrets it. He moves to stand in front of her, puts an arm beside her. No route to the door. She resists the urge to close her eyes and scream.

“We used to have fun,” he says, quietly. His eyes slide down her body. He puts his head close to hers. “So how about it, Viv? For old times’ sake. And we don’t need condoms, do we?” He slides a finger down the silk collar of her robe.

Viv finds her voice and rasps. “No, Jonnie. We didn’t have
fun
. What we had was abuse.” He stands immobile against her. An old fear frissons through her. This time she cannot help but tense, waiting for the sting of the first slap.

Instead he breathes, “Viv.” She feels her gown fall open as his
hand reaches inside. She bites at her lip, starts to push at him, when he says, “You know I still love you.”

His voice is so full of longing and regret that Viv herself feels a mix of yearning and sorrow. The emotion of last night returns. He sounds so like the Jonnie she fell in love with that for a moment her body relaxes. In her hesitation, she feels him press his body against hers.

“Mom, have you seen my –” Viv’s eyes flutter open to see Abbie’s shocked blue stare, followed by the flick of her blonde hair as she flees.

“Jonnie, get off me!”

She pushes at him and his laugh is short, derisive as he moves aside, letting her pass. The Jonnie she knows best. Viv rushes out the bedroom. She finds her eldest daughter in the sunroom at the front of the house. Abbie sits huddled in the wicker armchair, knees hugged to her chest, blonde hair hanging across her face. She looks so much like Gin, thinks Viv distractedly.

“Abbie…” Viv walks towards her and touches her arm.

Abbie leaps up. “Don’t touch me!” She springs across the room.

“Abbie…” Viv sighs.

“You slept with that policeman, didn’t you?” interrupts Abbie, still shouting. “I know you did. Your clothes are all over the floor.”

Viv stares at her, feels heat rush to her skin. This she had not expected.

“And he’s, like, young enough to be your son!”

“Abbie! That’s not true!”

Abbie is pacing in front of her now. “And then,” she fumes acidly, “as if that’s not enough –” She stops for a moment, looks at Viv, her eyes accusing. “The very next day you go and throw yourself at Dad.”

Viv is aghast. She had thought to have to explain. That she is unhurt despite Jonnie’s molestation. Sluggishly it dawns on her that all Abbie would have seen was her mother, naked under an open
robe, eyes closed, pressed up against Jonnie. This is worse, infinitely worse. And Jonnie will be no help, she knows; he will say nothing to Abbie.

Abbie rages on apparently emboldened by her mother’s silence. “Have you no shame?” She comes up close now.

Viv can see spittle at the side of her mouth. They stare at each other, strangers.

Then Abbie leans forward. Her voice, when she speaks, has quieted, but the venom of the single word will stay with Viv forever. “Whore.”

Without thinking, Viv’s hand comes up. She slaps Abbie across the face.

Abbie’s eyes fill with tears of shock and pain.

Viv recoils, her hands fly to her mouth.

Kayleigh’s voice penetrates through from the hall, as they stare at each other in mutual horror. “Come
on
, Abbie! Where are you? Dad’s already waiting in the car! Bye, Ma!”

Viv reaches her hand out again towards Abbie, starts to apologise in a voice strangled with dismay and despair. “Abbie, I’m sorry.”

But her daughter turns and runs from the sunroom.

Viv does not follow, stands and stares out at the cloudless Cape day.

The mountain is painted in green.

She hears the front door slam.

Winter descends once more. A chilly October, a fateful October. Leaves falling red, like blood. Gin walks the wet mile down the
Portobello
Road, named for an ancient sea victory, past pashminas and porcelain, saucepans and silverware, cheap tin trays. The Spanish store is past the bridge, she has a yen for olives grown under the Mediterranean sun, for biscotti baked in clay ovens. The market is crowded and her progress is slow.

She is barely past the flower stall, run by the elderly
Lithuanians
, when the crowds overwhelm her suddenly. Friday at its worst, a group of Arab women, ubiquitous trolleys, there is an argument of high unintelligible shrieks. One woman pushes another, who spits out what sounds to Gin like a garbled curse. The crowd parts obligingly. In this movement, one of the women appears to lurch at Gin, and she stumbles back, boots finding no hold on the wet road, her leg betraying her. Perhaps her inattentiveness, the numbness, is to blame. Her hand in instinct stretches out towards her perceived assailant, but only dizziness assaults her. Gin is fragmentedly aware of bright eyes behind a heavy veil, staring down at her. She is down on the cold hard pavement, and there is a new pain, unfamiliar.

“Please,” she says, to no one. Oh, God. She feels a wetness between her thighs. It must be time. She looks down. Her jeans are soaked. Red. So much red. “Please,” she says again, “I need an ambulance. I’m bleeding.”

The noise of the crowd intensifies, the flower seller bends over her, two hairdressers rush out of the salon alongside the stall. The
crowd gathers. But Gin is falling further, consciousness slipping. Afterwards she will remember only a scent of jasmine, and a siren, sounding through pain, and into oblivion.

They hand her a tiny bundle that is her daughter. For a moment, Gin finds it hard to breathe, hard to swallow.
Simon’s daughter
. The father she will never know. The child he will never know. The
daughter
he never had.

I’m sorry
, she thinks, and doesn’t know whether she addresses her child or Simon.
I’m sorry you won’t know each other
.

There is nothing of me in this child, thinks Gin. She is pure Simon. She looks up with eyes the colour of her father’s, and the same intensity of gaze. Skin a smooth olive, and a head already thick with black curls. Fists clenched, already fighting. Maybe this is good, thinks Gin. Her daughter may face so much alone.

She strokes the sooty hair.
I don’t know what to call you, little one
. Exhaustion washes over her.

An image forms. Her grandmother, her mother’s mother. Ellen, fair Ellen, as fair as this child is dark. Ellen, whom everyone said she, Gin, resembled.

You look like your father. You have his looks. From me, you will have your name. Ellie
.

She takes her home, and mother and daughter stare at each other warily. They are surrounded by a chaos of colour, the bright yellow cot Michael had bought, the baby mobile slung with painted wooden animals – a zebra, a giraffe, a lion.
So she knows she’s from Africa
, he said. Why, wonders Gin, with all this brightness, does it all feel so bleak?

Gin goes through the motions of motherhood, the newly learned tasks of feeding, and changing, and cleaning, and doing it all again. Her life quickly falls into a routine based around this needy
newcomer. She misses Viv most now, Viv’s warmth, Viv’s expertise, her seemingly natural maternal instinct. She remembers Viv’s
confidence
with Abbie. She rings her once, twice, but there is no reply. Gin doesn’t know what to say to the machine, so she rings off with no message. Viv would tell her the same as the midwife. Ellie is what the midwife calls a good baby. Gin supposes it is an enviable thing, the lack of crying, the relatively undisturbed nights, but she finds her daughter, this familiar stranger, unnervingly quiet. Is there something wrong with her, she wonders, or just something wrong with me? Do all mothers feel this way? Did her own mother feel this about her, about Gabe? She finds it hard to relate to this silent little child with Simon’s eyes. Seeing Ellie, seeing Simon’s eyes and face, she expected it to be simple, for a bond to form naturally. Instead, all Simon’s daughter does is remind Gin daily of his death.

She phones Michael one lonely, quiet night. She tries to tell him how she feels, her worries, but he dismisses her concerns.

“Gin, relax, she’s fine. Stop worrying.” He starts to talk excitedly about his preparations for the course, how good it is to be home again.

He doesn’t understand, she thinks. I am alone and no one can help me.

He phones the following week and leaves a message. She listens to his voice. It sounds five thousand miles away. She deletes the message and does not phone him back.

A month after her birth, Ellie fits. Vomits and seizes, her little body alternately limp and rigid. St Mary’s hospital is closer, supposes Gin, but whatever the reason – roadworks, bed space, urgency – the ambulance goes to Hammersmith
hospital
instead. The same hospital they had taken her after her fall, the same hospital Ellie was born in. Inside the white cell of the ambulance, Gin lets the paramedics intervene. How young they seem. They are efficient and soothing,
eliciting information from her she otherwise could not have
articulated
. Again, she finds herself beholden to this country, its systems, structures, people. An hour later, only an hour, Ellie lies flaccid and pale in the brightly-lit Neonatal Unit, four floors above the traffic of west London.

Ellie has settled now into an imposturous sleep. With each fresh ripple that had passed through her daughter’s limbs, Gin had felt a wave of guilt. Others are in control, in charge of Ellie’s care.
Strangers
. She sees blame in the no-nonsense attitude of the nurses. They ignore her while they set up Ellie’s drip, turn their backs while filling in her chart. They know I do not love this child, thinks Gin. They know I am a bad mother. She searches the small face for its former liveliness. Those all-seeing eyes are closed from drip-fed drugs. The house officer is apologetic. His registrar is not answering his bleep. Gin must please leave her child, go home, wait. The nurses,
infinitely
better equipped than she, will look after Ellie. Please, she must not worry, come back in the morning. Ellie has the best of care. Nonetheless, a fitful night follows, till muffled traffic louder than the song of birds wakes her before dawn. Gin walks to the hospital to fill the time, yet still she has to wait.

Halfway to a comfortable consultancy elsewhere, the paediatric registrar had obviously mastered the art of hardening his feelings to protect his sleep. Ellie’s blood culture is clean, he tells Gin. With no obvious infection, he will call Neurology to consult. He is already onto the next cot, the next infant who lies isolated by illness.

Neurology will want her child to have an EEG. Ellie’s brainwaves must be tracked, monitored, inked by a needle onto feinted paper. Magnificent steel machinery will dwarf her daughter. Soft cool gel will attach electrodes to her fragile new skin, to tiny temples still blue-veined and transparent.

And then they must wait again. She and a listless Ellie must wait in the terrible silence of limbo, invaded by the ignorant noise of a
busy ward. Every footfall is harsh, each beep of a machine, the radio too loud, a nurse’s laugh, staccato and histrionic.

Later it will blur.

In retrospect it will be seamless, unfragmented, but now
Neurology
is here, they say. Gin’s heart is thudding, battering her sternum, an aortic rage building. Her body is quivering. Neurology is here. Crisp, clean, white-coated Neurology walks toward her daughter. She realises she is hallucinating. She tells herself it cannot be him. No doubt it is lack of sleep. It cannot possibly be him. It must be extreme fatigue.

The neurologist is Jonnie.